The Grass Widow's Tale

fantastic a performance that was, from Pippa. You’d have thought getting to London that night was a matter of life and death to her. She’d expected the car to be waiting in the road for her, and instead, it was locked in the garage Bill and I rent —rented—down at Floods’, at the end of the street. When she realised nothing was going to get her her own way any more, she suddenly dived her hand into her bag and pulled out a gun. That gun.” He glanced across at the drawer where Bunty had hidden it, and then at her attentive face, and said wryly: “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

She gave him no reassurances, and made him no promises. Not yet. “Go on,” she said.

“Well, I still can’t believe in it myself. These things don’t happen, not in connection with people like Pippa. Where would she get a gun? Why should she want one? And why, for God’s sake, should she care enough about going to London with me to grab it out of her bag and point it at me, and tell me I’d better keep my promise to drive her down, or else! Why? It mattered to her just getting her own way, I know, but surely not that much? And she meant it, I know she did, now. But then…”

“Then,” said Bunty, “you were too furious to be cautious.”

“Too drunk,” he said hardly. “She waved this thing at me, and threatened, and as far as I was concerned that was the last straw. I wanted to kill her… or, at least, I was ready to. Oh, I know that, all right! When it happens to you, you know it. I just went for her. No holds barred. I got her by the wrist and we had a wild, untidy sort of struggle for the gun. About the rest I’m not sure. But I know I ripped it out of her hand. I know that. I know I was holding it when we both fell over together, and went down with a crash. I’m not sure what I hit. The edge of the table, I think. I hit something, all right, I’ve still got the hell of a headache and a bump like a hen’s egg to prove it. All I know for certain is that I went out cold for a time. I don’t know how long, exactly, but not long, not more than twenty or twenty-five minutes, I’d say. When I came round, I was lying over Pippa on the floor. And I still had the gun in my hand. And Pippa… she was dead. It took me a few minutes to understand that. I was shaking her, talking to her, telling her playing the fool wouldn’t get her anything… Oh, my God! You wouldn’t believe how little different she looked… not different at all. There was no blood, nothing to show for it, only that small hole in her sweater. She looked just as if she was pretending, to frighten me. And that would have been like her, too. But she didn’t move, and she didn’t breathe… and there was that hole, and just the ooze of blood round it, that her sweater absorbed. And in the end I knew she was dead, really dead, and I’d killed her. You,” he said abruptly, turning the full devastating stare of his haggard eyes on Bunty, “you change things. But not even you can change that.”

She leaned forward and laid her hand possessively on his arm, holding him eye to eye with her. “The shot… There’s just one bullet-hole. Did you hear the shot?”

He thought that over with agonised care. “Not that I can remember. I’d expect the moment when we fell to be the moment when the gun went off. When I fired it,” he corrected himself grimly. “I told you, I meant murder. But I don’t actually remember hearing the shot. All I know beyond doubt is that I came round, and she was dead.

“And I panicked. I can’t blame the drink for that. I wasn’t in very good shape when I came round, but I tell you, I was stone cold sober. I tidied up the room, and locked the house, and ran for the car. You can get it round to the back gate, and it’s quite private there. I packed up girl and luggage and all in the boot, and picked up the spent cartridge case—it was there on the floor right beside her—and locked the place up again, as if we’d set off according to plan, and got out of there. It didn’t take long, there was no mess, no blood… She was lying on her back, you see, and I reckon the bullet must be still in her, I couldn’t find any exit wound. I threw the spent case in a field as soon as I was out of town. All I thought of was getting away. At first I didn’t know where, I was driving round and round on the country roads in a state of shock, trying to think, and I had to have a drink to help me. I had to. And that was when I met you.”

He looked up, and for a moment studied her with wonder and care, forgetting himself. “It’s funny, how you’ve changed. You had the black dog on you then, too. It was because you were sad that I wanted to talk to you. I wish I’d left you alone. I’m sorry!”

“What were you going to do?” asked Bunty.

“I thought of this place. I’ve been here several times with Reggie and Louise, and they gave me an open invitation to use it even after they’d packed it in for the year and gone home. They’re like that, they probably invited other people, too. That’s why they leave a key. And I thought of Reggie’s boat.”

“You were going to drop her overboard,” said Bunty, “and head for Denmark, or somewhere…”

“Norway, actually. It must be possible to land unobserved somewhere on all that tremendous coastline, and I know my way around there a little. I’ve even got friends there… though I don’t suppose,‘’ he owned drearily, ” that I could have dragged them into this mess.”

“And I,” she said practically, almost cheerfully, “was to go overboard, too, in mid-passage.”

He stared back at her mutely, out of the extremes of exhaustion, unable any longer to be ashamed or afraid. Even the tension which had held him upright was broken now, after the slow blood-letting of this confession. He was close to total collapse.

“Why didn’t you take your chance when it came?” he asked in a thread of a voice. “Why did you send the police away?”

She got up slowly, and moved away from him to pick up the shards of the tea-pot. “I’d better get this mess cleaned up,” she said, momentarily side-tracked, and lost that thread again on the instant. The housewife was there, somewhere inside, but fighting against the odds. She straightened up with the fragments in her hands, and stood frowning down at them thoughtfully.

“I didn’t need them,” she said, and turned to face the boy on the settee, whose eyes had never ceased their faithful study of her through the cloud of their guilt and sorrow and resignation.

“I’d only just realised it,” she said deliberately, “but I knew I didn’t need them. In the night I wasn’t thinking or noticing very clearly, or I might have known before. Things are distorted as soon as you’re afraid. Maybe I did know, subconsciously. I think I may have done. I had all the evidence, if I’d been able to recognise it. When you drove at that constable in Hawkworth… did he jump back first, or did you swerve first? I didn’t work it out then, I know now. And what a lot of trouble you went to, to avoid running down a hare, even when you were on the run. No wonder you couldn’t go through with it when it came to my turn.”

Half of that, she realised, was lost upon him. He was in no condition to follow her through such a maze; but he clung to his own question, and it bore a slightly different inflection now, tinted with the living wonder of genuine curiosity, and—was it possible?—hope!

“Why did you send them away? Why didn’t you hand me over to them, and be safe?”

“Because,” said Bunty, now with something very like certainty, “I was safe. Because I don’t believe you are a murderer. I don’t believe you ever killed anyone, not even